i was gonna put this in pearl pt 5,but ended up being long enough to be a diferent post
So everything started in the 80s with a small pharmaceutical company called Hasbio presenting military grade combat stims and easy to deploy med kits to treat gunshot wounds, for the military ambassador there it was just another company to make some contracts with
But for Hasbio it was the beginning of a new era for his company
The meeting went as usual,all his proyects getting rejected due to the high individual costs of said products, completely ignoring his high efficiency ,but that didn’t matter, it wasn’t the point of that meeting anyways
The true point of said meeting (at least for the hasbio CEO and his scientists) was the presentation of the next step in the weapons race against communism
Many companies at the time were working with the idea of a “super soldier”, genetic investigation, drugs, biomechanic augments, infantry guns that would give any soldier the power to be an one man army
But hasbio wasn’t going to take those obvious routes, off course no, after all, they all had a critical flaw, they would still require American soldiers to risk his lives, Americans that could be better things like going to space or burning crosses on fire with their friends of the RNA
No no, what hasbio planned was ground breaking, armies had used dogs, elephants and even pigs in war, but anything like the creature that was in the making in their lab
the words “beasts of war” was the first thing that the officers saw in the projected wall, followed by a montage about the apex beast, a beast that would be able to devastate the enemy using both the pure strenght of his horse like body to break the bones of any enemy of freedom, as well as his cunning intellect to infiltrate and relay information using his vast array of colours as camouflage and his capacity to glide to his location after being deployed by a plane
the animals would be winged,and would have a horn for offensive purposes,they would be Smart enough to operate weaponry too(off course said weapory would had to be custom made by a subsidiary of hasbio)
they would be able of bioluminescence, blinding all the enemies in a room before killing them by lead overdose in the form of heavy machinegun fire, some of them were even projected to be able to spit fire or simply highly flammable saliva,his feces would be corrosive enough to be chemical weapons of their own too.
the presentation continued with more and more promises, great Intelect, undisputed adaptability, no training needed, they would literally be born with the instructions engraved in their DNA
and the best part of all, they would breed with each other so fast that they would outnumber any army in the world
laughter was the response of the officials
off all the crazy ideas that they had to heard, this was by far the most ridicule of them all, one officer even fall to the ground and started kicking the ground, completely uncapable of controlling his amusement
but off course this was the 80s, and every single company out there knew that was a simple, magical phrase that would guarantee almost unlimited found from part of the government as well as all the resources needed for said investigation.
“i understand that some of you may consider this idea a little…unortodox, but rest assured i am pretty sure that when American troops start to fight against soviet communist chimeras you would come back to us “the CEO said as he started putting his things in his suitcase.
Suddenly, the room was silent, the laughter stopped, and 3 officers were looking at the CEO with a thousand yard stare, one single question was muttered
“What do you mean by that”
“I mean, that the soviets are already working on a similar proyect” that was it, everything that was needed to say in order to get surreal amounts of governmental funding, that phrase, and a acomplice, luckily for everyone the CIA was always looking for ways of funding their own operations, and they weren’t exactly picky
One of the officers, the one that was running in circles on the ground, got up and went straight to the wall phone, after a quick call with one his informants (that made a previous deal with hasbio)he was in fact, informed about a soviet project similar in concept, the only difference was that this project started some months ago.
After the huge success that was the meeting (and a equally huge check from part of the army) hasbio transformed from a small lab that would make simple, boring and useless things like life saving medicines to a bio-industrial complex with one single goal, create the perfect war beast.
Luckily hasbio was already working on the bases, and after a gentle donation of very patriotic American volunteers by part of the goberment(homeless people that survived MK ultra and had no other use)there was enough human genetic material to make the first batch
The result was…not exactly as expected.
The animals, big as a Mastiff, would break their own bones after kicking too hard due to his hollow bones due to the bird DNA needed for the gliding wings(wich barely worked,giving the prototypes many injuries after landing or even more broken bones)other wil simply collapse under his own weight after reaching maturity,their bioluminescence used too much energy and it would provoke a considerable loss of body fat after use,leaving them defenseless after a single use.
Every prototype that was capable of spitting fire died at birth after a single flame erupted from his mouth, burning his respiratory system.
But not every side effect was bad, as an unexpected side effect, the prototypes were capable of talking, thought due to his facial musculature not being the one of a human his speech pattern was the one of a child at best thought
The remaining prototypes proved to be loyal, obedient and smart enough to solve simple puzzles
From then on they worked on improvements upon the descendants of that first generation
The talking issue couldn’t be addressed but after some exposition one could easily understand them
The prototypes weren’t naturally aggressive, on the contrary, they would only defend themselves or run but not for long, since the stamina of said prototypes wasn’t great they wouldnt run for more than 1 minute and their healing capabilities were terrible making them obsolete after one bad fall to the ground, those 2 problems were addressed immediately, giving birth to a new generation of fast healing highly energic prototypes, off course this came at a cost, these prototypes had an even higher caloric demand that the previous one that was already high enough, there were attempts to make the creature omnivore, so it could eat the remains of enemy soldiers, sadly all prototypes exhibited a tendency to cannibalism instead
After many generations of faulty prototypes hasbio wasn’t even close to fulfill a lot the promises it made to the US army, so founding was cut
To make things even worse , after this point 9 years had happened, the walls of berlin crumbled and communism had officially lost, so the idea of communist chimeras wasn’t that much of a threat now(and the CIA agent you made a deal with stopped the fake reports after completed his task of deliver armament to the brave mujahideen fighters he was helping with rocket launchers or something, they never really asked for details)
Hasbio was in red numbers, and they had one, very big defective product to sell, so off course they took the best possible course off action
They asked for a loan , a very big one , and they took a different approach with their star product, after all, it was clear by now that it wasn’t going to be combat viable …but what about emotional support? The prototypes showed to be extremely loyal and affectionate and there were a lot of PTSD soldiers and widows that would love to have a caring pet that would hear their sorrow, and even answer to them!
So modifications were made, the aggressive genes were removed as best as possible and the supportive nature of the prototypes was increased as much as genetically possible
More colors were added to the mix, in order to make the prototypes more likeable by women and kids
After that the first batch was ready for testing,3 units were send to 3 homes that previously signed an NDA
But then again, the results were…not exactly as expected.
The first home (Single widow )had no real complains other than the excessive size of the prototype that meant copious amounts of food were required to keep it well fed and obscene amounts of feces to clean
The second home (one veteran with PTSD)showed positive results at first, sadly the individual ended up tired rather quickly of the limited speech pattern and low intelligence that resulted in a bothersome ammount of questions for every little thing so it was quickly retired before ensuing any accidents due to the subject’s unstable state
The third house however,was a total failure,this house was composed of a widow and her little kid,who showed extreme depression after losing his father in Vietnam,again,the results were positive at first,until what later will be know as the first recorded“smarty incident”
According to the prototype´s own testimony, he tried his best to be supportive but it was useless,no ammount of love and hugs would do anything to make the child smile, after that he realized that both the wife and the son were too “stupid” to recognize any kind of emotional support, and since they needed a man in the house to be happy, he was going to take that role, so he started bullying the kid into happiness, forcing him to play with him and hitting him when he refused to smile, when the mother tried to intercede, he would hit her too and would threat her about not tell anybody about it, and so the family entered into a fake happiness cycle ensured by beatings, insults and threats
The prototype started calling himself smarty, as a way to remind himself that he was the smartest of the house, the mother had no way of asking for help nor could she beat the big horse like creature, so she had no option but to keep the act
Sadly, his son wasn’t as strong willed, and one day he finally broke, taking his own life , this send the mother into pure rage, as she grabbed a knife and started to attack the creature into a suicidal attack, the commotion attracted neighbours that shot the prototype until they assumed it was dead. Hasbio managed to control the incident, the mother recovered from her wounds only to end up in a catatonic state in an asylum under the supervision of her brother. the prototype was recovered, interrogated upon confirming that he was still functioning and promptly incinerated after an extensive biopsy in search of any kind of defects(according to the bad tongues, the CEO himself throw it into the incinerator while the prototype was still breathing)
After this the decision was made to make the products as harmless as possible, the hooves became leathery and soft, the size was greatly decreased, the toots were softened to prevent damage by biting.
After a year of experimenting, the result was a creature the size of a beagle that could only hurt his own kind, completely harmless for everything bigger than a small rodent, sadly the decreased size came with their own problems, a smaller head meant a smaller brain, the intelligence of a 10 years old became the intelligence of a 4 years old(6 years old in the best documented cases), the decrease in overall size also meant less intestinal length which only increased the amount of food required for the products to subsist and increased the amount of feces the product will generate
More improvement was required to release the final product but at this point hasbio was running on prayers and hopes, so they decided to start with the publicity to attract investors and preorders
Many investors seemed interested, even some pasta company was wiling to invest very generous amount if hasbio managed to make his “fluffy ponies”(as the marketing team decided to name them) love the precooked canned pasta that they made
Everything seemed to be well until the catatonic mother not only spontaneously recovered from his state after seeing one of hasbio’s comercials,but went to the media and decided to ignore the NDA making his story public, after that the neighbours that went to her home that day also testified, suddenly, hasbio was in the crosshair of every reporter and paparazzi
The final stroke came when PETA decided to contract Pinkerton to break into Hasbio´s HQ, destroying years of work and causing hundreds of prototypes to escape
After the official documents leaked and was proved that fluffys originally came from human experimenting and were indirectly responsible for 9/11 hasbio was done for, this time for good
As for the fluffies,most of them died due to the elements after the first days, and everybody thought that was it
sadly, it wasn’t.
A lot of them were secretly adopted by families and homeless people that took compassion of these talking mini horses that begged for food and love, these last ones became the real problem, since they quickly learned how to scavenge for food and survive in the streets thanks to their new owners knowledge, knowledge that they teached to their sons and so on, causing them to expand themselves amongst the country, taking entire crops and spreading deceases until it was too late
In modern times fluffys are considered the worst modern plage in the world(even though it only affected USA, while in other countries are heavily controlled pets)and there is no real solution to his existence, so humanity simply started to coexist with these shadows of the “apex beast “as they were called the first time, but after seeing the damage that these little ones can make, one can’t help but wonder if the original project was a success to a certain point.